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Book Review: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

cover art for The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno Garcia

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Del Rey, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593355336

Available:: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy: Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com

 

 

This reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau takes place on the Yucután peninsula in 1871 against the backdrop of the Yucután Caste War. A hacendero, Joseph Lizdale, hires the adventurer Montgomery Langdon, a functional alcoholic with a special set of skills that include hunting, taxidermy, and working with dangerous animals, as mayordomo for the isolated estate occupied by Doctor Moreau, who is researching creating human/animal hybrids as replacements for rebellious Mayan workers, his daughter Carlota, and the more successful hybrids.

 

Six years later, Montgomery is content in the company of the Moreaus and their hybrids and Carlota has grown into a young woman. Lizdale’s funding is drying up, and the doctor’s research is stalled. Eduardo and Isidro Lizdale arrive without the elder Lizdale’s knowledge demanding men to help chase down Mayan rebels. Carlota defuses the confrontation by inviting them in. She and Eduardo fall in love and he asks her to marry him. Change, and revelations, are coming.

 

The point of view alternates between Carlota and Montgomery. I really liked Montgomery’s voice and enjoyed his character. Carlota frequently grated on me probably due to her naivete and meekness, but she was kind and loyal. Watching their relationship develop was interesting- he was a more thoughtful man than he often appeared.

 

The monstrousness of Moreau and his work is evident to the reader early on but it’s only as Carlota realizes it that we really see it. The monstrousness of the hacenderos, even one as handsome as Eduardo, is easily revealed. The hybrids, who appear to be monsters to the humans, are less monstrous than their creator and those who wish to exploit them.

 

This is a fast, engaging, easy read. You don’t have to be familiar with the source material, but it did enhance my reading experience.

 

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 24, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

 

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Berkley, 2023

ISBN-13: 9780593201268

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

Louise receives a phone call she never thought she would get from her brother, Mark. Their parents have been killed in a car accident. A single parent to Poppy, Louise doesn’t want to leave San Francisco for Charleston, South Carolina to deal with the estate. However, certain her brother can’t cope with any of the organization and care that is needed to get the old house sold and settle things properly, she grudgingly goes back to her childhood home. Their father, Robert, was a retired successful academic. Their mother, Nancy, ran a successful Christian puppet ministry, creating every puppet with her own two hands, as well as a amassing a collection of dolls, handmade art, and taxidermy. Then there is Pupkin. Oh, we will get to Pupkin later.

 

It seems the moment she sets foot in Charleston, she can’t find the time to mourn or cope with the shock of the death of her parents. Fighting with her brother over everything, including and especially the inheritance, sets the siblings on edge. When they do manage to talk in a civil way, they discover they have very different views on their childhood, and what Pupkin meant to both of them.

 

Pupkin…is he possessed? Is he haunted? Whatever he is, he’s a terror in more than one sense of the word. If you’re his friend, he will take over your entire being. If you are foe, just watch out. He’s got a killer mindset and he’s not afraid of anything.

 

Part of the reason I keep picking up his books is that Hendrix has a unique mix of off the wall horror, gore, and humor in his novels. Another part is that he has a way of writing believable characters, and everyone has flaws. The tense relationship between Louise and Mark feels very real. When the rest of the family gets involved in, well, everything, the story gets even more interesting. Mark opens up about his experiences with Pupkin after Louise has left their family home, which is intense and one of the most horrifying parts of How to Sell a Haunted House. Where Louise felt her brother was the favored child, always being coddled and supported throughout every failed scheme of his, he felt she was the gold standard and that she was always so perfect. The scenes between the siblings are well executed.

 

If you’re a fan of creepy dolls and puppets, family drama, and good, campy horror, pick up How to Sell a Haunted House. Just beware of taxidermy squirrel nativities…

 

Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

 

Posted on October 28, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Inkyard Press, 2021

ISBN-13: ‎978-1335402509

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy;   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

Wow. Polydoros set out to write a work of historical fantasy about Jews and Judaism not set during the Holocaust, and was inspired by an article about H.H. Holmes to set his story among Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

 

Alter, the main character, was ill as a baby and named to avoid the notice of the Angel of Death, but people around him frequently die. Alter is also gay, but in denial and ashamed. He is in love with his roommate Yakov, who leaves to meet someone and is found drowned the next day, the most recent of several Jewish boys who are dead or missing.

 

Alter, a member of the burial society, is helping immerse Yakov in the mikveh when he thinks he sees Yakov move, and jumps in the mikveh to pull the body out. Instead, he is possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk (a dybbuk is a malicious spirit, usually the dislocated soul of a dead person with unfinished business). Alter’s only choices to save his own soul are either0 to exorcise the dybbuk or to find Yakov’s killer and exact revenge. Luckily, he has the help of Raizel, a unionist working for an anarchist newspaper (the local matchmaker keeps trying to hook them up), and Frankie, an ambitious Russian Jewish teenage criminal and boxer who heads a gang of thieves.

 

This is such a layered, detailed story, both in the integration of the various aspects of Jewish culture and the Eastern European immigrant experience, and the vividness of the Chicago and World’s Fair setting. In addition, it really reveals the viciousness of antisemitism in this country and how it also traveled from overseas. I think people don’t really think about how insidious and common it was. It’s truly a Jewish horror story, and there aren’t too many of those around. I’m so impressed with the research and writing on some very difficult-to-address topics.

 

The City Beautiful won the 2022 Sydney Taylor Award and was a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the 2021 National Jewish Book Award, and the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Toung Adult Novels. The attention is well-deserved.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on August 29, 2023 by , Reply
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